- Published: September 17, 2022
- Updated: September 17, 2022
- University / College: University of St Andrews
- Level: Masters
- Language: English
- Downloads: 50
My experience in vending may be limited to selling lemonade and sandwich when I was still a kid. I am aware that this experience may not be as tough such as those I see in the streets of Thailand or Philippines during our travel but this experience provided me an insight on how it is to do vendor selling.
Being a vendor even with a simple product such as selling lemonade to our community made me appreciate the basic principles of business. One important principle is that my sales must be higher than my expenses. Although most of my supplies came from our kitchen, I still have to think about profit and that my sales should be more than the things that I bought from the grocery such as cups, containers etch.
The experience also taught me a valuable lesson that it is tough to make money. Customers are fickle and ask a lot of questions even with just a simple lemonade and they could be demanding. As a vendor and seller, I cannot, of course, complain because customers are always right (I learn that somewhere). We teenagers often do not realize how hard it is to earn money because we just ask it for our parents who in turn have to earn them to provide for the family and that includes us who like a lot of things from then even if many of it is not important. Vending which involves an effort to make money made me realize that money does not grow on trees and it has to be earned sometimes the hard way.
My experience as a vendor selling lemonade and sandwiches to our community may be tough but it has its rewards as well. After the vacation where I did the selling, I saved all my sales and was surprised and happy to have earned that much. I made a few hundred dollars and at that time, it was the biggest amount of money that I ever got hold of and it felt good. It felt very good to have that money not because I felt rich but because I earned them by myself. I can still remember when I had that money the things that I can with it. But since I cannot decide, I asked my parents who in turn took the significant portion of it to open a savings account for me and only gave me enough to spend.
The reaction of my parents on how to handle my earnings from vending also taught me a valuable lesson to be financially wise. Being financially wise meant not spending all the money that I have but to save or invest them for future needs.